General Henry Clinton: The Phillipsburg Proclamation
Learn how General Henry Clinton’s 1779 Phillipsburg Proclamation offered freedom to enslaved Africans in American colonies, aiming to disrupt the Patriot war effort.
Thomas Jefferson: Roman Law Gambit
Explore how Thomas Jefferson’s proposal to adopt Roman law aimed to legitimize slavery in the U.S., circumventing English common law prohibitions.
Lord Dunmore: America’s First Emancipator of Slaves
The freedom lawsuit of a mixed-race woman named Elizabeth Key in 1655 brought before a colonial court drove Virginia’s House of Burgesses, its…
James Somerset’s Habeas Corpus Trial
The ethnic group Afro-Englishmen… born in the North American colonies during colonial times and Africans brought to the North American colonies who were…
Lord Chief Justice Mansfield: The Mixed Ancestry Aristocrats
Lord Chief Justice William Mansfield was England’s most celebrated jurist of the 18th century… dubbed The Age of Enlightenment. He was born to…
Nathaniel Bacon’s Rebellion: The Creation of the White Race
During colonial times within the North American colonies the Atlantic slave trade was robust and from 1526 to 1867… some 12.5 million Africans…
Hereditary Slavery Comes to Colonial Virginia
In the classic treatise, Commentaries of the Laws of England in 1765, Sir William Blackstone observed that “If an uninhabited or infidel territory…
Elizabeth Key: A Trail-Blazing Afro-Englishwoman
The colony of Virginia did not have plenary authority to enact positive laws. Virginia’s House of Burgesses, in all instances were legally required to secure the assent of England’s King on all colonial statutes.
Anthony Johnson: Father of Afro-Englishmen
The first Africans landing on colonial America’s shores in late August 1619 were indentured servants, not slaves and each was granted freedom once…
Jefferson and Washington’s Illegal Slave Activities
In the Atlantic in 2014… journalist and writer Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote an essay titled The Case for Reparations. He challenged each and everyone…